Authors: Jane Aiken Hodge
In the end, he gave in, reluctantly, and insisting that if a suitable ship should, by any miracle, arrive at Lisbon before the port was closed to the British, as he feared it soon would be, they must agree to sail with her. To this, Camilla yielded readily enough. It would be time for argument when the ship appeared. Besides, Lavenham looked more and more exhausted and had told her that he must be at Queluz again early the next morning. This was no time for unnecessary talk.
From then on, she and Chloe lived a strange life, marooned, as it were, in their country villa. Although the Prince Regent had still not answered the French and Spanish ultimatum, Lavenham was increasingly afraid that he would, in the end, yield to the demands made upon him. In these circumstances, he thought it best that Camilla and Chloe should not appear at Court, but remain as quietly as possible in the country. As for him, he spent every day adding his arguments to Strangford’s in the vain attempt to persuade Dom John that an attack by Bonaparte was inevitable and that his best and indeed only course was to move his entire court to his American province of Brazil and wait out the coming storm in safety there. When Camilla protested at this defeatist advice, Lavenham explained that the Portuguese army was negligible, while both it and the country in general were riddled with secret supporters of France who still believed in Bonaparte as a liberator. Only bitter experience, he thought, would convince them of their mistake and this they were all too likely to have. Strangford, too, who rode back once or twice with Lavenham to dine and sleep at the villa, was gloomy about the prospects and made no secret of his doubts as to the wisdom of Camilla’s and Chloe’s remaining. But as the hot August days followed each other, and the surrounding hills grew more and more parched and brown, no English ship was reported at Lisbon, and Camilla and Chloe remained where they were, force perforce, much to Camilla’s relief. For she was increasingly anxious about Lavenham, who continued pale and withdrawn beyond what the situation seemed to her to merit. He was brief with her, almost abrupt with Chloe, their earlier teasing relationship a thing of regretful memory only. It was almost a relief when the Prince Regent moved his court back to Mafra and the distance was too great for Lavenham to return home every night. Alone together, Camilla and Chloe resumed a seemingly peaceful life of reading and work. The French lessons, whose purpose had been only too obvious to Camilla since she had discovered Chloe’s affair with her brother, had been tacitly discontinued, but both were making rapid strides with their Portuguese. As for Charles, or, as Camilla insisted even on thinking of him, M. Boutet, they never mentioned him. Camilla felt she had nothing to add to the scolding she had administered on the day of discovery, and was indeed only too grateful that Chloe seemed to be bearing the enforced separation so placidly. She wondered, occasionally, whether the lovers still contrived to correspond, but thought it best not to provoke an explosion by enquiring too closely. After all, they would undoubtedly be leaving for England soon enough and this would put an end to everything. For Lavenham, on the rare occasions when he contrived to visit them, was more and more gloomy. Arriving, one night, drenched with the first September rain, he announced that the French and Spanish envoys had, as they had threatened, packed up and left Lisbon. And instead of taking this as the signal for positive action, the Regent continued to hesitate and temporise, now asking the English for assurances of his safety and convoy to the Brazils, now hovering near to granting the French requests, refusing to admit that the time for this—if there ever had been one—was past.
It was later that rainy night, after Chloe had gone off, as usual, early to bed, that Lavenham, who had been pacing restlessly about the chilly room, came suddenly to stand beside Camilla as she sewed. She put down her work and looked up at him in suddenly anxious enquiry.
“I have been meaning to ask you,” he paused for a minute, took another rapid turn about the room, and returned to stand over her again. “The day before we left Lisbon,” he said. “You remember it?”
“Of course.” She was cold with more than the chill of the fireless room. What could be coming?
“You were out in the garden—not ours, the one next door. I came to look for you.” He spoke in short, disjointed sentences. “It was growing late. The dew was falling. I thought it time you and Chloe were indoors.” Again he stopped, listening to the desolate patter of rain on the marble terrace. Then, in a rush, “Who was the man you were talking to?”
“The man?” At all costs, she must have time to think.
“Yes. Do not, I beg, think that I was in any sense spying on you. I heard your voices: that was all. I thought I saw someone with you. I did not wish to seem to intrude. I should have asked you sooner.” He passed a hand over his forehead. “You do not, I think, quite understand, you and Chloe, what a nest of spies we live among.” He was looking at her now, almost, it seemed appealingly. What a blessed relief it would be to tell him. But how could she, now, so long after the event, expose poor Chloe, who thought herself safe, to the explosion of his wrath? It was all over: let it be forgotten. And yet, how she hated to lie, and to him, of all people. She looked up from her sewing, where it lay, neglected in her lap. “What man?” she said. “I remember no one.” She regretted the lie as soon as it was spoken, but, to her relief, he seemed to accept it.
“Strange,” he said. “Can my memory have been playing me tricks again? I was positive ... You are sure you were not talking to one of the gardeners?”
“So late at night? You know they would not think of working after evening. But ask Chloe, if you are still in doubt.”
“What?” He took her up on it at once. “As if I would not trust your word. No, no ... I must have imagined it. I shall be glad when we are back in England. My mind has not recovered its tone since my accident ... it is the pressure of events, I suppose. I am wretched company for you and Chloe, I’m afraid. I only wish I could send you home.”
She rose and put away her sewing. “You are worn out,” she said. “That is all the trouble. Let me give you some laudanum to make you sleep.”
“No, no, thank you just the same. My mind is troubled enough. I will not tamper with it further. But neither will I keep you up talking here. It is too cold to be sitting so late without a fire. I only wish we could move back to Lisbon, where the house is more fit for cold weather, but the Prince Regent seems fixed at Mafra and so long as he stays, I must. Nor do I think it safe for you and Chloe to return without me.”
“No, anything rather than that.” His sudden questions had reawakened all her anxiety on Chloe’s behalf. She hoped, of course, that M. Boutet would have left with the rest of the French mission, but nothing was certain. Much best not risk exposing Chloe once more to his dangerous proximity.
Lavenham was looking at her strangely. “You really prefer it here, with all the discomfort of draughts and cold?”
“Of course. So long as you are here.” So much, surely, she could say.
He smiled at her more kindly than he had done for some time. “Very well, that is settled, then. So long as I remain, you and Chloe shall do so too. We will all freeze together.” Alone in her own apartments, Camilla allowed herself the relief of a passion of tears. If only she had had the courage to tell Lavenham the truth ... Now, looking back on it, she was sure she had been wrong to shield Chloe at the expense of a direct lie. It was frightful to have convinced Lavenham that his memory was playing him false, while his kindness, his confidence in her and refusal to apply to Chloe for confirmation of what she had said were more than her guilty conscience could bear. If he should ever learn that she had lied to him, he would never trust her again.
She woke next morning feeling ill and wretched, her first thoughts of the unlucky interview of the night before. But it was too late now for regret, she had committed herself to the lie and must stick to it. Resolutely putting the thought of it out of her head, she dressed and went down to the breakfast room, where she found Lavenham already eating a hurried meal preparatory to leaving for Mafra. She sat down across the table from him, but the sight of food sickened her. She crumbled at a roll, pretended to drink her coffee, and made an early excuse to leave the room. To her relief, Lavenham appeared to notice nothing. He was busy giving last-minute orders to the steward, for this was to be an absence of some duration. He had had news that Antonio de Araujo, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, had been urgently summoned to Mafra, and as he strongly suspected Araujo of belonging secretly to the French party, neither he nor Strangford would think it safe to leave the palace so long as he remained there. But he urged Camilla to have everything ready for a sudden move to Lisbon in case this should become necessary. She promised to do so, said the formal goodbye that was all she allowed herself, watched him anxiously as he rode away along the hillside, and then retired to her room to be sick.
CHAPTER 8
September passed, the sun came out to shine on hills that were green from recent rain. The heather on the plain below them was in splendid blossom, and Camilla and Chloe, in their afternoon rambles, were delighted to find enormous pink and white lilies blooming among the wild moss under the cork trees of a nearby valley. But all the sunshine could not warm Camilla, who continued chilly and wretched, shaken by alarming fits of nausea and faintness. It was Chloe, one golden afternoon, when Camilla had been compelled to sit for a time on a mossy bank to recover from a giddy spell, who suggested an alarming explanation of her state.
“Can it be that you are breeding, Camilla?” she asked, with her devastating schoolroom frankness. “How delighted Grandmamma would be.”
Camilla, with a sinking heart, pooh-poohed the idea. She was merely suffering, she said, from nerves and the intolerably greasy Portuguese food. She convinced Chloe easily enough, but convincing herself was another matter. More and more, as September darkened towards October, she began to fear that Chloe was right. If so, what should she do, how break it to Lavenham that she was to bear his child? How bitterly, now, she regretted that she had not told him the whole story of their night together when he first recovered his senses. And yet, in the face of his total oblivion, his almost unbearable return to the old formal relationship, how could she have? Would he, even, have believed her? Wary as she knew him to be of female guile, might he not have thought she was taking advantage of his admitted forgetfulness? No—it would have been impossible to tell him—and yet, now, how she wished that she had. If it had seemed impossible, before, to tell him that he had broken through a lifetime’s suspicions and slept with her, how much more so, now, when she must tell him, as well, that in that one ecstatic, forgotten night, he had got her with child.
How could she hope that he would believe her? Distrustful, always, of women, he must inevitably think this a ruse on her part to conceal her own unfaithfulness. As she grew, morning by morning, increasingly, despairingly certain of her condition, her one, pitiful consolation was that there was no one else, after all, whom Lavenham could possibly suspect of being the father.
But even this forlorn consolation was snatched from her, one mild October morning, by an unexpected visit from Dom Fernando. Chloe, to whom Camilla had allowed increasing liberty since the departure of the French mission, was out gathering arbutus berries on the nearby hillside, and Camilla, welcoming Dom Fernando with apologies for her husband’s absence, found herself, alone with him, unaccountably ill at ease.
As always, they spoke French, and it was in that language that he assured her that he had known Lavenham was still at Mafra, had, in fact, left him there that morning to return to his own house in Lisbon. He had not been able, he told her, to pass so close to her villa without calling to find out how she did. And then, to her appalled surprise, he seized her hand and burst into a speech of passionate love. He could no longer bear, he told her, to stand by and see how Lavenham neglected her, how carelessly he exposed her to danger. Why, at any moment, the French might be over the border, and here she remained, on their very line of march to Lisbon. It was enough to make a man mad, he said, to see so much beauty and goodness so treated. How pale she was, how thin, her appearance distracted him! He had not meant to speak, had meant to love on in silence, but, seeing her thus, how could he help himself? He must tell her how completely he was her slave, how entirely hers to command.
She had contrived, at some point in this long and vehement speech, to withdraw her hand from his, but there was no stopping him. When he was silent at last, looking at her with a mixture of hope and despair, she found herself strangely moved. He asked nothing, seemed to hope nothing. For the first time in her life she found herself the object of disinterested affection—but with what disastrous possibilities. Here, ready made, if he should not believe her story, was a suspect for Lavenham. Every moment that she continued talking with Dom Fernando was fraught with danger, and yet, she could not bring herself to be less than gentle in dismissing him. She did her best to convince him of the injustice of his criticism of Lavenham, assuring him of her devotion to her husband and explaining that it was at her own insistence that she remained at Sintra. He listened to her patiently enough, but refused to be convinced, and continued to beg her to call upon him if she should find herself in any difficulty. “For, say what you will, I will not believe that husband of yours as devoted to his wife as he is to his politics.”
This came uncomfortably near the bone, and it was a profound relief to Camilla when she heard Chloe singing “Lady Fair” in the garden. When she appeared with her basket of arbutus berries, Dom Fernando stayed only long enough for the necessary polite speeches, then took his leave, begging Camilla, once again, to let him know if he could be of the slightest service to her.
“Do you know,” said devastating Chloe after he was gone, “I really believe the old goat is sweet on you, Camilla. And if he did not stink so of garlic and salt fish, he would be a proper enough conquest.” She was quite surprised and hurt when Camilla rounded on her, telling her to mind her manners and try to speak like a lady, if she could not think like one. And Camilla herself was so taken aback by her own vehemence that she ended by bursting into tears, apologising to her sister-in-law and retiring to bed.
Morning brought no comfort. Ill and wretched as usual, she wandered from room to room under the pretence of making arrangements for the sudden move Lavenham had warned them might be imminent, but in reality driven by the restlessness of despair. Until yesterday, she had continued to hope that it might yet be possible to tell her story to Lavenham and be believed. Dom Fernando’s outburst had changed all that. When she remembered how he had haunted the house while Lavenham was away, she could not bring herself to hope that Lavenham would not suspect him. In fact, now that her eyes had been opened, she felt that she had been mad not to have thought of him as a possible suspect sooner. Perhaps it was as well she had not tried to tell Lavenham ... and yet, how she wished she had. Her thoughts went round and round like this, till, finding them and the house alike intolerable, she made her way out on to the terrace and down into the sloping walks of the garden. The day was fine, with a new crispness in the air that helped to revive her spirits, and she drifted up and down the alleys, trying not to think, and noticing instead the mosaic patterns of the fallen leaves, red, black, and yellow, that strewed the walks. They were another reminder that winter was coming, and she found herself passionately hoping that before it began in good earnest the crisis that had been looming over them for so long would break. Anything would be better than this desperate inaction. If only the French would attack, they might at last go home. At the thought, a pang of fierce home-sickness overwhelmed her and with it the glimmering of an idea. It was cowardly, perhaps, but might she not persuade Lavenham that she was not well enough to stay? At home, she might be able to convince his grandmother of the truth of her story. Old Lady Leominster would be a powerful ally, and surely her desire for an heir would help to persuade her. And yet ... it would mean leaving Lavenham, for however eagerly she had defended him against Dom Fernando’s criticisms, she was sure he would put his work first and stay to see it through. And quite right, too, she told herself angrily, particularly as her illness must seem to him nothing but an affliction of the nerves.
Returning at last, reluctantly, to the house, with nothing decided, she found Chloe looking for her. Her first words chimed oddly with Camilla’s thoughts. “I have been looking everywhere for you,” she said reproachfully. “Do you think you are well enough to be wandering off alone? The girl tells me you have eaten no breakfast. I wish you will sit down and take something now. And will you not let me send a messenger for Lavenham? You do not sleep, you do not eat ... Camilla, do you not think we should go home?”
“But how?” Camilla had sat obediently down, enlivened by a faint amusement at this odd reversal of their roles, and had begun to pick idly at a bowl of fruit.
“Someone told me there was an American boat at Lisbon. We could take passage on her. I know you do not wish to leave Lavenham, but truly, Camilla, he is much better, it is about your health that we must be thinking now. Do, pray, send for him at once. The
Jane
has already unloaded her cargo, I believe. There is no time to be lost. Oh, Camilla, think of London, the blessed English food and clean sheets at night. Or we could go to Brighton; I know you would recover your spirits there: it is the enervating Portuguese air, I am sure, that has made you ill. Please, let us go home, Camilla; I am tired of it here: I do not wish ever to smell garlic again, and as for their sunshine, they are welcome to it: I would give anything for a comfortable London fog.”
Camilla could not help laughing. “Ungrateful girl, I am sure you will sing another song when we do get home and encounter one. But, tell me, how do you know about this American boat—the
Jane
?”
Chloe was elaborately casual. “Oh, somebody told me— one of the men, whose family is in Lisbon. Was it Pedro? Or Jaime? I vow I do not recall, but it is certain enough, I tell you, and no time to be lost. Only let me send for Lavenham and he will arrange everything.”
Camilla knew Chloe well enough by now to be sure that she was lying. Who, then, had told her about the
Jane
? Could it be that she was still seeing—or at least corresponding with —M. Boutet? Had he not gone with the French mission after all? With a chill memory that his friend M. Mireille was a self-acknowledged spy in England, she wondered what sinister role her brother filled in Portugal. “Chloe.” She had just begun the essential question when they were interrupted by an excited servant who announced that milord was riding up the hill.
Inwardly noting Chloe’s look of relief, Camilla ran with her to welcome Lavenham, who had just dismounted from his exhausted horse. He, too, looked infinitely weary and Camilla hurried him indoors to comfort and a glass of wine, before she would do more than exchange the most routine greetings. Sitting, he sighed with relief. “Ah, I was ready for this. I have been to Lisbon and back since yesterday,” he explained. “And on a fool’s errand, too, I fear. There is an American ship in the harbour.” Camilla and Chloe exchanged glances as he took another long draft of wine. “The
Jane.
I hoped to get you passage on her, but my information came too late. She was loaded to the gunwale when I arrived; her captain said he could not take aboard so much as another child. They are paying twelve hundred pounds for one family’s passage to England. I wish I had heard of her sooner. I am afraid I have done wrong, gravely wrong, in letting you stay so long.”
He looked so tired and depressed that Camilla forgot her own anxieties and hurried to comfort him, reminding him that it was she who had insisted on staying. “And, besides,” she went on, “surely there will be other ships? It is true that Chloe and I have been saying, only this morning, that we should be glad to get home. Should we, perhaps, move to Lisbon and await the next one?”
He made an impatient gesture. “But that is the whole point,” he said. “Dom John has signed the edict. Tomorrow all Portuguese ports will be closed to British shipping, and who knows how long it will be before another American boat touches here? No, I have done wrong,” he said again, “and regret it too late. For I fear that now he has yielded this point, the Regent will soon give way to the other French demands. It is only a matter of time until he orders the arrest of British subjects that remain and the confiscation of their property.”
“But surely,” protested Camilla, with sinking heart, “that will not apply to us? You have diplomatic immunity. He cannot touch us.”
“I wish I could believe it. I fear I have let Araujo lull me into a false sense of security. I am increasingly convinced that it is he, not Dom Fernando, who is playing the French game. I only wish I had realised it, and listened to Dom Fernando’s warnings sooner. He has been urging me, this month or more, to send you both home without delay. And now it is too late. I shall never forgive myself—” He stopped in the middle of this gloomy sentence and changed his tone. “But there is one crumb of comfort. Strangford has received information that a British squadron, under Sir Sidney Smith, is on its way to Lisbon. We must hope that they arrive before conditions here become impossible, or before the French invade, which, I am sure they intend to, whatever last-moment concessions Dom John may make. In the meantime, I think you had best move back to Lisbon: this house is too lonely, and too close to what must inevitably be the French line of attack, for it to be a suitable home for you now. Can you be ready to leave this afternoon, for if so I shall be able to give myself the pleasure of escorting you.”
Camilla assured him that they had everything in readiness and could easily make their final preparations in time for an afternoon journey, but could not help asking, “And you? Will you be able to remain with us in Lisbon?”
“Not beyond tonight, but at least the Prince Regent plans to move his court tomorrow to Queluz, to join his mother. So at least I shall be only an hour’s journey from you.”
Comforted by this news, Camilla set about her preparations with a will, and felt better, so occupied, than she had done for some time, so that when, over a light luncheon preparatory to departure, Chloe raised the question of her health with Lavenham she was easily able to scout their anxieties. It had been, she assured them, nothing but an affliction of the nerves: the move back to Lisbon would doubtless be a cure in itself. And indeed the drive back, in mellow afternoon sunshine, was a pleasant one. The heath below their house was still brilliant with a profusion of wild flowers and when they reached the Valley of Alcantara, which had been so parched and dry when they last traversed it, they found it resplendent with an almost springtime green. The orange and lemon trees under the pillars of the gigantic aqueduct that crossed the valley were vividly green again and brilliant with ripening fruit. When, at Chloe’s insistence, they stopped the carriage for a few moments so that she could pick some of the flowers that enamelled the close and fragrant turf, they could hear larks singing, far above them. Camilla, who had found the carriage’s jolting over the rough roads far from pleasant, was delighted at the excuse Chloe had given her to sit for a while in the benevolent sunshine with Lavenham beside her. He seized this opportunity, when Chloe had wandered away a little in search of some particularly luxurious myrtle blossoms, to question Camilla more closely about her indisposition, and did it so kindly that she was on the point of risking all and telling him the truth when Chloe came running back with her armful of blossom, and the opportunity was gone.
Still, it was a happy day, with Lavenham kinder than he had been for some time, teasing Chloe and taking care of Camilla so that she began to feel that, if this had been achieved by her lie to him on his last visit, it was almost worth it. She was relieved, too, to find that he no longer seemed to suspect Dom Fernando of spying on him and began to hope that before he left she might have the chance, and the courage, to tell him her secret. But the chance never came. They found the servants they had left to look after the Lisbon house in a state of panic, the house itself in rack and ruin with a family of toads six inches across in the cellar. Lavenham was busy all evening putting some heart into the servants, who had been convinced they would never see master or mistress again, while Camilla and Chloe had their work cut out for them in making the house habitable once more.